THE Universe lit up just 200 million years after it was born, according to evidence gathered by MAP. That’s a surprise for astrophysicists, who had thought that the cosmos was pitch black for half a billion years.
The darkness began when the fires of the big bang subsided and the Universe was filled with cool gases that emitted little radiation. Until now, no one knew when the dark age ended because any light reaching us now from the earliest objects would be too faint for our telescopes to detect. MAP has not seen this first light, but a subtle side…
